TomB
10-07-2004, 05:24 AM
It seems as though every year in this century I wonder how much smaller tech shows can get and still survive. This year's TechXNY has got to be the end of the line though. The aisles were empty and you would never recognize this as the show that started out as PC Expo with a quarter million users and then turned into a sort of PPC Expo. Half the show was outsourcing services; the other half was a mix of everything but PC and PPC computing. The only really interesting vendor there was Mustek, and they had nothing to do with anything but they were showing some really interesting color PVPs and micro MP4 cameras. My guess is that this show was 10% of the size of turn-of-the-century productions.
I never thought I would miss the corny magicians, giveaways and product promotions but without any substance or emerging products/tech at least the corny stuff would have given this show SOME value! The fact that these shows like CeBit America and TechXNY are dead or almost flies in the face of shows in other areas that are growing. It would be interesting to hear other takes on this. Is this the end of annual techfests? Why did this happen? What replaces this?
BTW, as little as four years ago these were still events to look forward to. At the 2001(?) show, Microsoft's Derek Brown threw a really great PPC party at ChiChi's next to the David Lettermen Theater with literally hundreds of PPC users. I really miss the excitement of new technologies, and hanging with fellow techies. At an earlier show, I met Jason and host of others like Dale Coffing and Steve Bush. I guess those days are gone along with a lot of the original momentum and interest tech users had in mobile technologes. Sad...
I never thought I would miss the corny magicians, giveaways and product promotions but without any substance or emerging products/tech at least the corny stuff would have given this show SOME value! The fact that these shows like CeBit America and TechXNY are dead or almost flies in the face of shows in other areas that are growing. It would be interesting to hear other takes on this. Is this the end of annual techfests? Why did this happen? What replaces this?
BTW, as little as four years ago these were still events to look forward to. At the 2001(?) show, Microsoft's Derek Brown threw a really great PPC party at ChiChi's next to the David Lettermen Theater with literally hundreds of PPC users. I really miss the excitement of new technologies, and hanging with fellow techies. At an earlier show, I met Jason and host of others like Dale Coffing and Steve Bush. I guess those days are gone along with a lot of the original momentum and interest tech users had in mobile technologes. Sad...